Pickup trucks are motor vehicles with a front passenger cabin, and an open top rear cargo area, often referred to as a box. The box usually has a substantially flat bed from which two sidewalls and a forward interconnecting headboard extend upwardly therefrom. Pickup trucks may also employ a bottom hinged door, commonly referred to as a tailgate, hinged at the rear edge of the bed and closable to provide a fourth wall for the cargo area. Passenger cabins and boxes may be separate assemblies or part of a single body structure. Pickup trucks are popular largely because the box allows greater flexibility of use, including carrying a variety of types of cargo and towing various types of trailers.
Traditionally the majority of body structures on pickup trucks have been formed from steel alloys. Through years of experience, pickup truck designers have learned how to engineer steel truck body parts that withstand a variety of demanding pickup truck applications. The current regulatory and economic environments have increased the importance of making pickup trucks more fuel efficient as well as functional and durable. One way to reduce the fuel consumption of a vehicle is to reduce vehicle structure weight.
Certain areas of the body require resilience to frequent high load conditions. For example, mounting locations of the body to a chassis frame receive significant road loads, as the mass of the body rests on these mounting locations. The requirements of the mounting locations increase further for larger vehicles having more mass. The frequency and magnitude of loads input through the mounting locations can reduce overall customer drive quality by adversely affecting noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) performance.